Behind the Scenes: Why Compliance and Safety Are at the Heart of Everything We Do at Sanctuary

When you drop your child off at Sanctuary Early Learning Adventure each morning, something extraordinary is already underway and most of it, you’ll never see.

Behind the warm greetings, the inviting learning spaces, and the sound of children laughing and exploring, our leadership and educational teams are working with incredible intention and precision. Every single day, our centres operate within a carefully designed compliance and safety framework that ensures each child in our care is protected, seen, and surrounded by an environment that meets the highest standards in early childhood education.

We believe that families deserve to know what this looks like in practice. So today, we’re opening the door and sharing exactly what happens at Sanctuary each and every day to keep your child safe.

What Does Compliance Actually Mean in Early Childhood?

In Australia, early childhood education and care services operate within the National Quality Framework (NQF) a comprehensive set of laws, standards and guidelines that set the benchmark for quality care. The Education and Care Services National Law and Regulations, the National Quality Standard (NQS), and here in Queensland, the additional requirements of the Child Care Subsidy legislation and Queensland’s Child Safe Organisations Act 2024, all form the foundation of how we operate.

But at Sanctuary, compliance isn’t just about ticking boxes. It’s about building a culture of care that goes deeper than any checklist. It’s about knowing, truly knowing,  that every child who walks through our doors is safe, valued, and protected.

Quality Area 2 of the NQS speaks directly to children’s health and safety, and it is one of the areas we are most deeply committed to exceeding. Quality Area 7 addresses governance and leadership — the systems and structures that make consistent, high-quality safety practices possible across all six of our Queensland centres.

Before the Children Arrive: The Opening Safety Routine

Safety at Sanctuary begins before a single child walks through the door. Each morning, our team works through a thorough opening procedure checking that the previous day’s closing procedure was completed, that hallways are clean and presentable, that the reception area is ready to welcome families, and that every indoor and outdoor space is prepared and safe.

This includes checking that all surfaces are clean and clear of clutter, that shelves and cupboards are organised, that the front entrance is presentable, and even that indoor and outdoor plants have been watered. Even the small details like ensuring the lint filter in the dryer has been cleaned and the reminder sign is visible are part of how we embed safety into the everyday rhythm of our centres.



Every item is checked and signed off by the Director, with a digital record created and stored in 1Place, our compliance management platform. This formal accountability means that everything verified and nothing is assumed. 

The Playground Safety Checklist: Every Space, Every Morning

One of the most thorough parts of our daily compliance routine is the Room Playground Safety Checklist, completed every morning by a qualified educator before children access any outdoor space. This is not a quick glance it is a structured, scored assessment that covers every aspect of the outdoor environment, with photographic evidence uploaded for each item.

Our playground checklist covers seven key categories:

• Gates and Fences: all fence lines are checked for hazards, and every gate is confirmed to be secured and self-closing.
• Safety: sandpits are raked and inspected for debris, paths are swept to prevent slipping, climbing structures are checked for loose parts or hazards, safety plugs are confirmed in all external power points, and dangerous equipment such as rakes is confirmed to be out of children’s reach. Any pooled water that could pose a risk is also identified and addressed.
• Equipment: all decks, tyres and climbing equipment are checked for spiders, and softfall and fall zones for equipment over 600mm are verified.
• Environment and Stations: hygiene stations are checked to be fully stocked with gloves, tissues, and the outdoor environment is confirmed to offer a range of learning experiences including passive, active and exploratory spaces.
• Bubblers and Troughs: drinking water is confirmed to be accessible to all children.
• Emergency: evacuation routes in front of classrooms and walkways are confirmed to be clear of clutter, and all evacuation doors are verified as accessible.
• Supervision Mirrors: all mirrors are confirmed to be correctly positioned, unobstructed, clean, and in good repair.

Each checklist is scored, signed off by a named educator, and stored digitally. Our teams consistently achieve 100% on these checks and that consistency is something we are incredibly proud of. If items are identified as a risk an automatic email is sent to the Director to action. It reflects a team that doesn’t just follow a checklist because they have to, but because they genuinely care about the children in their care.

The Daily Run Sheet: A Real-Time Picture of Every Child, Every Room

By 10:30am every day, our leadership team completes and submits a comprehensive daily run sheet that captures the full operational picture of the centre. This document tracks every classroom, every child, and every educator. It takes into account the anticipated and actual number of children for the day, educator qualifications in each room, current ratios, programming time allocations, lunch cover schedules, and proactive mentoring hours.

This run sheet, including the completed playground safety checklists, is emailed directly to our Operations Manager and senior leadership team every morning by 10:30am. It creates a real-time, verified picture of every centre across our network so that if anything requires attention, it is identified and responded to quickly.

AM and PM Compliance Checks: Bookending Every Day with Safety

At 9am every morning, a formal AM Compliance and Monitoring check is completed through 1Place, covering the centre’s environment, ratio sheets, digital sign-in systems, and overall readiness for the day. Every child’s sign-in is verified against our digital attendance system, and all staff are confirmed as signed in through our workforce management platform.

By 10am, our leadership team checks all classroom rolls and cross-references them against our attendance records. If any child who was expected has not arrived, our team contacts the family directly by phone every time, without exception. Knowing where every child is, at every moment, is fundamental to everything we do.



Then at 4pm, as families arrive for afternoon pickup, a second formal PM Compliance and Monitoring check is conducted. This ensures our environment, records and practices remain consistent and compliant right through to the end of the day. Safety doesn’t clock off at lunchtime it runs from the moment we open to the moment we close.

Morning Meetings, Team Huddles and Proactive Mentoring

Before the busyness of the day takes hold, our Director, Assistant Director and Educational Leader meet together each morning to plan intentionally - tours, new family inductions, proactive mentoring time with educators, morning huddles with the team. Nothing is left to chance.

After the Leadership meeting a member of the Leadership Team then facilitates a huddle in every classroom. These are meaningful moments of connection with the teaching team talking about the children in the room, any individual needs for the day, planned learning experiences, and the wellbeing of our educators. A connected, informed team is a safe team.

Every day, a member of our leadership team also spends dedicated time within classrooms and in the playground in a proactive mentoring role coaching and supporting educators while simultaneously observing safety, supervision, ratios, and the overall wellbeing of every child. This time is recorded on the daily run sheet and forms part of our visible, accountable commitment to quality.

Our Educational Leader: Where Quality Practice Meets Child Safety

Every Sanctuary centre has a dedicated Educational Leader whose role weaves compliance and educational quality together in a way that directly benefits every child. Throughout the week they visit every classroom to conduct a formal compliance and monitoring review of learning programs, checking documentation, learning stories and daily learning journeys, and providing written feedback to each teaching team.

Every week our teaching teams critically reflection on their practice. Our Educational Leader reads every single one and responds personally. They facilitate reflective team huddles in every classroom across the week and meet individually with Lead Educators to review practice, share research, and set goals.



Each Friday, the Educational Leader writes a reflection on the week and shares it with the Director for inclusion in the centre’s weekly wrap-up communication to the whole team and families. Reflective educators create safer, richer experiences for children and this rhythm of intentional reflection is one of the most powerful things we do at Sanctuary.

Illness, Incidents, Records and Emergency Preparedness

Every illness, injury or medication event at Sanctuary is formally recorded and managed. Our leadership team checks, signs and files all Incident, Injury and Trauma Records, Illness Records and Medication Forms into individual child files weekly, and a centre-wide Illness Register captures all health events across the service.



Emergency preparedness is equally non-negotiable. Every month, each centre conducts a formal evacuation or lockdown drill, recorded and reviewed in 1Place. Our evacuation routes and doors are checked every single day as part of the morning playground safety checklist because the best emergency response is one that has been practised and embedded so deeply that the team responds with calm and precision when it matters most.

Qualified People and a Child Safe Culture

Every Friday, our leadership teams conduct a review of the Staff Training Matrix checking all educator qualifications, first aid certificates, child protection training and other compliance credentials against the roster. Staff are proactively notified of upcoming expiry dates so there are never gaps in our compliance.

In 2024, Queensland introduced the Child Safe Organisations Act, deepening the requirements for organisations working with children to embed the 10 Child Safe Standards across their operations. At Sanctuary, this work was already well underway but this legislation strengthened our framework and our accountability to families. A child safe organisation is one where children’s safety is the primary focus of every decision, families are informed and empowered, and policies are not just documented but lived every day.

This is the Sanctuary way.

Our Promise to You

When you choose Sanctuary Early Learning Adventure for your child, you are choosing a team that cares deeply not just about what your child learns, but about how safe, seen and loved they feel every single day.

The opening checklists, the playground safety checks, the morning meetings, the daily run sheets, the AM and PM compliance reviews, the attendance calls, the reflective practices, the emergency drills none of these exist because they are required by law alone. They exist because your child deserves nothing less than the very best standard of care we can offer.

We are proud of what happens behind the scenes at Sanctuary. And we are even prouder to share it with you.